


once it ends (so it begins)

by nubbins_for_all



Series: Winter isn't goin' nowhere [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Basically 11k words of porn and hairbrushing, Doesn't pass the Bechdel Test I know I'll do better next time, Domestic af, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, I have no idea what this is or where it came from, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Past Sexual Assault, Smut, yeah there's a lot of that too please be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 04:55:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19940545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nubbins_for_all/pseuds/nubbins_for_all
Summary: Brienne doesn’t care why it’s cold. She just knows it’s really fucking cold.A quiet evening between the Lady of Winterfell and her sworn shield, with ruminations on sex, love, and dealing with everything being awful.





	once it ends (so it begins)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forpeaches (bluecarrot)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/gifts).



> Genuinely did not expect to write this fic (or any fic, at least not for GoT), but this summer I've hit a wall with my own writing and I needed to get out of my own head, and also Gwendoline Christie and Jaime/Brienne have their claws in me REAL GOOD. So here we are, 11k words of porn and sleepover chat and stuff about grain. Enjoy.
> 
> (Also I know it's bullshit that they could all hunker down in the North for a while after the Night King fight but ya know what I want domestic fluff and by god I don't care how much logic I have to ignore to get it, the showrunners certainly didn't care either)
> 
> In honor of (forpeaches) bluecarrot for inspiring me to get off my ass and write about these idiots because there's nothing lost and everything gained in writing anything at all.

It’s snowing again.

Or, more accurately, it’s snowing harder. Apparently winter in the North is just a single prolonged snowstorm that ebbs and flows like the tide. One minute, soft white flakes drift gently from the sky, slow and elegant in their individual downward dances; the next, thick clumps of freezing pulp fall in a relentless sheet of grey, rising foot after foot until the landscape is formless and blunt and buried.

It’s cruel, if weather can be cruel, but it explains a lot about Northerners. When you spend your life in battle with the sky above your head, the odd war among men might be a welcome distraction.

Another gale of wind hits the windowpanes with a bang and a vicious rattle. Brienne doesn’t jump this time ( _see, the North really is growing on her, Jaime would shriek like a little girl_ ) but she tenses automatically, her jaw set as the wind howls high and rabid around the castle walls. Winterfell is a Northern castle built for Northern winters, but she grew up on an island in the Stormlands. On Tarth, a person can see storms coming, a cavalry of dark clouds galloping over the sea followed by the onslaught of wind and rain. Here in the land of weak suns and thick snows, every direction is a blind spot.

Lady Sansa doesn’t care, of course, Northern to the bone. She’s bent over her desk, patiently scratching out figures in a ledger. Her chambers are cozy and warm, despite the hellish weather beating at her windows, and the room smells faintly of the rabbit stew they shared for supper. Lady Sansa has been foregoing the main hall in recent evenings, preferring to hunker down with silence and work. Usually Brienne eats with her, protecting her lady while savoring the rare moments of peace that come after a day of prowling around an over-crowded castle. Sometimes she’ll accompany Lady Sansa to her chambers only to find Arya already inside, spearing meat with her dagger ( _the dagger, the one that ended it all, sharp as ice and grey as Arya’s eyes_ ). When that happens, Sansa smiles at Brienne and dismisses her with a nod. She goes, because she knows if there’s one person who she can trust to protect her Lady, it’s her other Lady. Those nights she joins Podrick and Jaime for their meal and enjoys a different kind of peace.

* * *

_“Has she ever told you about the bear?”_

_“He doesn’t need to hear about the bear.”_

_“What bear, ser?”_

_“The bear I saved her from.”_

_“The bear who nearly ate both of us, you mean?”_

_“_ Ate _you?!”_

_“A jest, Pod, that’s all.”_

_“Not a jest in the least! It was at Harrenhal, with Bolton’s pack of wretches. They put her in a pit with a wooden sword and a bear the size of the Mountain, and if I hadn’t come galloping back just in time—”_

_“If you hadn’t flung yourself down there like an absolute lunatic—”_

_“If I hadn’t come back in time, she would have cut the bear in half with the tourney sword and worn his pelt like a champion’s robe. Do you disagree, my lady?”_

_“I do, and you’re not funny.”_

_“I don’t think he’s trying to be funny, ser.”_

_“He’s always trying, Pod, he just never gets there.”_

_“Dismiss me if you like, Ser Brienne, but we both know what you’re capable of. Or at least I do.”_

_“So do I, ser.”_

_“…I love it when her face goes that color.”_

* * *

Sansa sighs and rubs at her eyes as she blots the pen. There are only a few candles lit ( _more rationing_ ) and it’s too dim for Brienne to see what she’s writing, though she knows it has something to do with the grain rations being sent to Moat Caillin. With the winter extending itself past the death of the Night Kings and the Dragon Queen’s warm-blooded armies forced to shelter in the nearest fortresses, survival is very much a matter of numbers and fractions.

The only consolation to living like moles in holes is the knowledge that, according to the occasional hardy raven and refugee family, King’s Landing and the rest of the South are also in deep freeze, worse than any in recorded history. At least Cersei and her forces are just as immobilized as they are. Maester Wolkan and Samwell Tarly have spun some theory about magic of the First Men and the death of the Night King and so on and so forth to explain the severity of the winter.

Brienne doesn’t care why it’s cold. She just knows it’s really fucking cold.

* * *

_“Shove over, you’re stealing the furs.”_

_“You’ve got one all to yourself!”_

_“You would let a frail cripple freeze to death?”_

_“I would kick a frail cripple if he puts his icy feet back on me.”_

_“But your legs are so warm and my toes are so cold. What if they fall off from frostbite? No hand, no honor, and now no toes. Woe is me, the man ruined for want of his lady’s mercy.”_

_“You don’t want my mercy, you want my furs.”_

_“Here’s an idea. Perhaps we could share them. We would, of course, have to lie very, very close together. So close as to even be inside one another…”_

_“Is that really the kind of line you think I’ll—ah!”_

_“Apologies, my lady, my fingers are even colder than my toes.”_

* * *

“Brienne?”

“Yes, my lady?” Brienne thinks maybe Sansa is saying her name for the second or third time. She knows she shouldn’t think about Jaime and their bed and the things they do in it ( _and sometimes out of it_ ) while she’s with her Lady, but even the mind of a Knight and sworn shield can…wander.

“Would you like a cup?” Sansa repeats, smiling as she raises the jug of spiced mead. Apparently, it’s favored above wine at Winterfell, probably because it has such a quick and hearty warming effect. Brienne’s come to like it, though Jaime still whines about the rationing of Dornish red. “I can’t stare at bushels and cartloads and fillets anymore tonight.”

“I’m all right, my lady. But thank you.”

Sansa nods and pours herself half a cup. Brienne watches the candlelight play over Sansa’s face, changing her from a teenage girl to a frosty noblewoman and back again. At Sansa’s age, Brienne spent her time drilling with weighted swords, practicing footwork on the beach, and dreaming up songs about a woman knight who fought with the spirit of Visenya Targaryen. She’d already kicked and punched her way out of two betrothals, and the memory of Renly Baratheon’s kind face and whispered words _(“nasty little shits”)_ kept her warm against the chill of those who whispered and sneered at her. She was young and fierce and ready to live.

Sansa has been a bride twice over. Her body has been hefted and battered and violated and sold. She has been told over and over again that her power is in her cunt and in her name, and over and over again she has proven the error in the workings. She has refused to break, and now her strength keeps thousands of people whole. Sansa is young and fierce and has already lived. But still she wants more.

* * *

_“Are you all right? Brienne?”_

_“I…”_

_“What’s the matter? Did I hurt you?”_

_“Gods no, I just…”_

_“_ What _, ser, what is it?”_

_“I didn’t know you could do that.”_

_“…me? Or anyone?”_

_“Both. Is it—does everybody know about it?”_

_“I hope so. They certainly should.”_

_“It…it feels…”_

_“…feels? Please, Brienne, speak. I want to hear you.”_

_“It feels like you’re kissing me down there.”_

_“Well, I suppose I am.”_

_“But the way you kind of—you know—the way you flick your—oh don’t smirk, I can barely look at you as it is—but how do you know how to do that? Did someone teach you?”_

_“Of course. We had a maester at the Rock whose only task was to educate highborn boys in the art of making a woman come on their tongues.”_

_“…truly?”_

_“Gods, Brienne, for the greatest warrior in the world—”_

_“Well how else would you know!”_

_“You learn…from experience.”_

_The crackle of fire, the slowing of breath._

_“I’m sorry, I didn’t—I tried to keep her out of this bed.”_

_“You don’t need to apologize, Jaime.”_

_“I want to. I want to beg your forgiveness morning noon and night, and when I’m not doing that I want to make you feel so good that you forget the things I’ve done and the person I’ve been for so long.”_

_“I don’t want to forget any part of you. Not Cersei. Not your past. Not anything that’s led us here. Forget that and we forget why any of it matters.”_

_“…can I kiss you there, again? Can I touch the deep parts of you, can I stay between your legs until you can’t stand it and then stay longer, can I be with you, Brienne, please, can I, can I, can—”_

_“Shhh, Jaime, shhhh…come here.”_

_“I will, I always will, to you.”_

* * *

“We’ll be snowed in for at least two days,” Sansa says thoughtfully, her eyes flicking towards the window as another gust of wind smacks against it. “Have the grain cellars been resealed?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Good. Someone should check them every evening and every morning. A few snowflakes breed mountains of rot.” Brienne nods. For a noblewoman, Sansa has absorbed the intricacies of saving and portioning food very quickly. Most highborn girls never have to think about where their next meal comes from.

“I used to love being snowed in,” Sansa says, her voice a little quieter. Brienne isn’t sure if she’s talking to herself. “Mother and Father would have dances in the main hall sometimes, with music and cakes and the biggest fires. All the boys and Arya went off to play hide-and-seek or throw knives at the wall or whatever they liked to do, but Mother let me sit beside her and sing along and clap for the highland throws…sometimes I would get to dance with Ser Rodrik, he had me put my feet on his and he’d carry me around. And then Old Nan would bring Bran and Rickon into my and Arya’s room and she’d tell us our favorite stories, and even though I hated the ones Arya and Bran liked because they were so frightening, on those nights I didn’t mind so much.”

Brienne sits quietly, unwilling to break the spell that Lady Sansa seems to cast upon herself. It must be so painful to feel homesick while sitting in your own home. Missing Tarth is hard enough without spending every day surrounded by the fact of what no longer is.

* * *

_“You don’t want to go there.”_

_“Why not?”_

_“It’s an ugly place.”_

_“It’s where you grew up. It’s one of the grandest castles in Westeros. It's your history.”_

_“You prove my point superbly.”_

_“What will become of it, after?”_

_“I don’t care. Casterly Rock can sit empty until it slides into the sea and the fish swim through my old nursery, I don’t care, nothing good happens there.”_

_“That’s not true. You. Tyrion.”_

_“And how happy is the world to have us in it.”_

_"Some memories must be good."_

_"They are, but the good ones involve Cersei and I don't want to think about her, and the bad ones are bad, and so at the end of the day I'd lose my other hand than wandering back through those halls, in my head or otherwise. Tell me about Tarth. Tell me about Lord Selwyn. What's he like?"_

_"He's a full head taller than I am."_

_"Fucking hells. Did_ he _nurse at a giant's tit too?"_

_"I used to climb him when I was younger, like a tree or a wall. He'd hold his arms out and I'd try to pull myself up onto his shoulders. We would go swimming together after a storm passed and the water was warmest. He likes to swim, and to ride, and to fuck a new woman every year without marrying her."_

_"Quite a fellow. You don't sound pleased."_

_"I'm not. Nobody ever fails to displease, not even fathers."_

_"But he loves you."_

_"He loves me, and he had armor made for me, and he stopped trying to marry me off when I asked him to."_

_"A saint, then, lawless fucking excluded."_

_"Not a saint. A good man. I miss him."_

_"Will he like me, when he meets me?"_

_"Jaime..."_

_"My father wouldn't have liked you. But he didn't like anybody. And now he's dead, and Casterly Rock is empty, and we stand on the battlements of our home at Winterfell. How the seasons do change."_

* * *

Sansa takes another sip as she stares out the window. Her hair is pulled back into a tight braid, which makes her look even more like her mother. Brienne can still remember Lady Catelyn, her shoulders squared, her eyes blazing, the ice in her voice as she called Jaime “Kingslayer.” He’d been so awful to her that night, and not for the first time, if Brienne had to guess. Lady Catelyn had acted with haste, Brienne knew, but not for the sake of vengeance. She’d risked everything for the sake of her children, and Brienne thinks maybe Jaime had respected that in spite of himself, at the time.

She wants to go and see Jaime. It’s getting late, and even without the snowstorm building outside the night would be pitch black. Supper’s been had and done in the main hall, and on nights when she’s not with him she knows he likes to wander a little afterwards. If Tyrion is here and not traveling with the Dragon Queen to check on one of her strongholds, they might drink together in the library. Sometimes he wanders down to the smithy and watches the embers glow, Robert Baratheon’s bastard moodily pounding out iron at his side. Sometimes he goes down to the crypts, where chunks of marble and clods of mud still litter the ground, and when he goes down there it’s to think about things he’d like to protect her from.

But by now he’s back in their chambers ( _who would ever dream she’d call a room “our” chambers_ ), and he’ll be taking off his boots, and his shoulders will be tense but his right arm won’t ache because he’s finally stopped wearing that useless golden hand, because she’d told him how little it mattered to her if he _looked_ whole, fuck anyone who cared how he looked, she knew how whole he _was_ , and he’d set his jaw like he was trying not to cry and run his hand over her collarbone and down between her breasts—

* * *

_“Jaime…Jai—oh!”_

_“Yes?”_

_“Gods, more, yes, now.”_

_“I didn’t hear the magic word.”_

_“Ah—what?”_

_“You know exactly what, a highborn woman like you. Say it.”_

_“I don’t have to sa-haaaaaaaaaay—oh_ Gods, _Jaime, faster, don't stop—”_

_“The magic word.”_

_“Moron.”_

_“Wrong.”_

_“Bastard.”_

_“Do I look like a Snow to you? Wrong again.”_

_“I’ll just do it myself!”_

_“Oh will you?”_

_“I will, unless you…unless…oh…Jaime, fuck,_ fuck _, just like that, don’t stop, yes, I—I—oh, oh, that—what? No! You little fucker, you—”_

_“One word, Brienne, that’s all I need.”_

_“What_ you _need—!”_

_“Ow! Easy, I’m an old man, I don’t wrestle quite as well as—BRI-enne, oh fuck, you—you—Gods, woman, oh—”_

_“Say it, Jaime. Say it or I’ll stop.”_

_“Yield! Yield! Yie—ah—AH!”_

_“…now was that so difficult?”_

* * *

“Brienne?”

She really has to stop thinking these things when Sansa is around.

Brienne nods and stands at attention. Sansa waits a moment to reply, as though she knows Brienne is coming back from somewhere else.

“I think I’ll retire for the night.”

“Very good, my lady.” Brienne stands, already bowing to take her leave.

“Would you—oh.”

She glances up. Sansa has caught herself, the next words stuck in her mouth as she looks away.

Brienne frowns. It’s been a long time since Sansa edited herself in front of Brienne. Neither of them may have ever expected to play these strange roles of sworn shield and high lady, but they’ve become so used to it and each other that half the time they don’t even need to speak to issue and obey commands. Brienne knows how Sansa looks and moves when she wants a conversation to end, when she’s pleased with a result, when she’s frustrated or curious or hungry. The look on her face right now, though—it’s unfamiliar. If Brienne had to choose, she might call it “nervous.”

“What is it, my lady?”

“Nothing. You’re just as tired as I am, you should take your rest.” Sansa is looking back at the window, her hand tight around the cup of mead. Brienne straightens out of her aborted bow.

“Lady Sansa, whatever you need, it is my duty to provide,” she says softly, speaking like she would to a skittish mare. Sansa half-smiles, a dry little expression that doesn’t reach her eyes or the tension in her neck.

“It is your duty to protect me, not to wait on me or indulge my fancies,” she replies. “Go, be with the others, with your—Ser Jaime.”

Brienne winces slightly. Sansa has never made a secret of how little she likes or trusts Jaime. But she also hasn’t made a secret of the fact that she knows Brienne and Jaime have been sharing a bed for almost two months. Brienne has found that keeping the two of them as separate as possible _(Sansa in her hands and her care and her strength, Jaime in her bed and her body and her heart)_ saves her from having to negotiate any tender spots. The way Sansa says his name even now, “Ser Jaime,” with a hint of disdain but a lack of venom, is itself a victory.

“If you’re sure, my lady,” she says, and doesn’t move. Her Lady does not trust easily, even with those she has already trusted many times. Brienne understands why. She gives her a moment to decide.

“Would you…” Sansa looks back at her, her grey eyes a fraction wider than usual. The wind whistles underneath the quiet of her voice. “Would you mind…helping me with my hair?”

It’s—not what Brienne was expecting. A discussion about her dislike for the Dragon Queen, maybe, or a request for something frivolous like lemon-water. Brienne has never helped Sansa with her hair, has never helped anyone with their hair, except maybe Jaime when he was caked in his own shit and mud and flies buzzed around his eyes and she had dunked him in a nearby stream when Bolton’s men weren’t looking. Then all she’d done was roughly scrub a hand through the mop of golden hair _(not so golden then, more the color of rotting meat)_ and try to get the shit and the mud and the helplessness out.

* * *

_“What’s wrong?”_

_“Nothing.”_

_“Jaime.”_

_“Brienne.”_

_“You look strange.”_

_“I_ am _strange.”_

_“Stop hiding and tell me.”_

_“…I dreamed about it. Before. When they tied my hand around my neck, and…I dreamed you ripped it off of me and threw it and it flew into the sky and never came down. Told you I was strange.”_

_“If I could fly into the sky and get it back—”_

_“But you can’t fly, and it’s not up there, and those men are all rotting under years of snow and shit. And we’re both here, and alive.”_

_“Who would have thought.”_

_“You did. You thought it. You told me to live.”_

_“I tell you to shut up all the time, when’s that going to happen?”_

_“I love you, Brienne.”_

_“Shut up, Jaime.”_

_“Kiss me.”_

_“I’m trying, come here.”_

* * *

Sansa probably wants something different.

“It’s all right if you’d rather not,” Sansa says in a way that makes Brienne think her face must have done something very strange. She clears her throat and shakes her head.

“No, my lady—I mean, of course, I would be happy to…help.”

A moment as Sansa looks at her, still as a stone, and Brienne may be confused but she never wants her lady to think she is not willing to do what she needs, give her what she asks for, no matter how difficult it may be _(now if Sansa had asked for help with a counter riposte or lifting large rocks, that would be much simpler)_.

Then a smile flickers across Sansa’s face like a candle being lit and she picks up her cup alongside the jug, sweeping past Brienne towards the windowseat near her bed. Usually it looks out over the woods to the west of Winterfell, but now everything beyond the glass is dark and snow.

Brienne turns and follows awkwardly, her hand going to Oathkeeper’s hilt like a nervous tic. She’s not wearing her armor tonight, hasn’t worn it into the evening since the week after the Long Night when the aftershocks of fear and panic finally stopped waking her up in the middle of the night to clutch at Jaime and taste blood on her tongue. But she’s still dressed in a tunic and breeches, her swordbelt high around her waist and her cloak thick from her shoulders, and she doesn’t feel like someone who helps with hair or sits by windowseats.

Brienne’s own hair had been long once, constantly full of snarls and knots, driving her septas to madness as they yanked out burrs and tried to invent new styles that would withstand her adventures in climbing and grass-fencing. At the age of twelve, fed up with yet another lecture on ladylike behavior and the need to please the eyes of men, Brienne had taken her little blunt training sword and sawed away at the long tangles until she was nearly bald. The septas had shrieked and lamented and rent their garments, but her father had snorted and given her a pair of shears “so she didn’t do such a bloody ridiculous job of it next time.”

That was the last time Brienne had anything to do with a lady’s hair, all the delicacy of brushes and ties and ribbons. Lady Sansa has handmaids for this, a sister, Samwell Tarly’s wife Gilly. Brienne is too mannish and thick. She’s not sure what she’s supposed to do.

* * *

_"Want to say goodbye to it?"_

_"You can grow another beard, Jaime."_

_"Ah, but this beard is special. This beard is the first one to wedge itself between your thighs and--"_

_"It's a_ beard _, for Gods' sake. Why are men like this, so affectionate towards their beards and their cocks and every other useless thing?"_

_"Women are like that too!"_

_"Because men expect them to be. And because looking pretty is how most women survive."_

_"Not you."_

_"I'm not pretty."_

_"True, I'd go with 'beautiful' or 'magnificent' or 'tremendous'--"_

_"Shut up, Jaime."_

_"But I bet if you could grow a beard, you would. They're good fun."_

_"I would not! And if it's so fun, why are you shaving it off?"_

_"Because it itches, and because as much as I liked rubbing you red and raw I want to feel every inch of you against my mouth the next time I go down there."_

_"If that the only bloody reason--"_

_"Well like I said, itchy. And Tyrion's is bigger than mine and it makes me feel silly."_

_"_ Men."

_"Just get rid of us all."_

_"I might."_

_"Except me?"_

_"Except Podrick."_

_"And me?"_

_"...well, you_ are _rather pretty."_

_"That's my girl."_

_"Call me girl again and I'll shave off more than your beard."_

* * *

Sansa eases herself into the windowseat and toes off her boots, pushing them against the wall. She refills the cup of mead and settles back against the windowframe, her eyes closing briefly. The hot springs below Winterfell and the fire roaring behind them in the hearth make the room feel close and warm. Brienne stumps over and sits carefully in the chair drawn up beside the seat. Her face is less than a foot away from the back of Sansa’s head. A cluster of nearby candles, stubby though they are, throw glints of gold into the slim red braid.

“My lady, I’m not…what do I…”

“Here.” Sansa doesn’t look back, but she reaches over her shoulder to offer Brienne a silver brush, the horsehair bristles clean and shining. “Undo the twist and then…if you wouldn’t mind, just brushing…it can get tangled, after a long day. And—”

Sansa brings herself up short. Brienne pauses, the silver hairbrush cold in her hand. “Since it’s late and this is…you can just call me Sansa.”

Brienne may not be womanly, she may be a knight with broad shoulders and deep scars, but she’s not an idiot. She can hear the way Sansa’s voice wavers just a tiny bit, suddenly sounding much, much younger. She thinks of her own father, sitting in his study late at night, reading thick old books while Brienne rest her head on his thigh and hummed ballads to herself, his long fingers buried in her hair, cupping her head like a warm and loving hat.

_(Did Lady Catelyn do this too, when Sansa was young and the snow shut them all inside? And if she did, why does Sansa ask it of me now?)_

Brienne carefully undoes the linen tie at the bottom of the braid, her fingers catching on the little black beads sewn to its edges. Probably Sansa’s handiwork, from the invisible expert stitching. She works her fingers _(long like her father’s, more delicate than they appear in gloves)_ carefully through the strands of hair, letting them fall apart thick and heavy over Sansa’s back. Sansa leans back just a little, and Brienne can see just enough of her face to watch her eyes shut briefly, an expression of trust deeper than words.

* * *

_“I can’t. I need to rest.”_

_“There is no rest in battle.”_

_“Oh do fucking tell, Brienne of Tarth. I’ve fought more battles than you by half.”_

_“And now you fight with fewer hands by half. Up, come at me again.”_

_“Cruel woman. I lost this hand for you.”_

_“I have thanked you many times. Up.”_

_“I fought at your side when the dead were coming for us, I fought death itself and lived, I don’t need to fucking train!”_

_“Yes you do, and so do I, if we don’t want to lose our—”_

_“Gods, you’re an obsessive.”_

_“I thought you rather liked that about me. Probably because it reminds you of yourself.”_

_“Exactly. Go find Podrick if you need someone to run back and forth across the yard.”_

_“Podrick trains on his own, he doesn’t need me to haul him to his feet like a sullen child.”_

_“Stop it, Brienne.”_

_“Come at me, ser.”_

_“You’re trying to get me to be as good as I was and I’m not, I never will be, I’ve accepted that so why can’t you?”_

_“Because you’ve accepted it and that’s the problem. Up.”_

_“I’m leaving.”_

_“I know you can do it.”_

_“You’ll find me kneading bread in the kitchens.”_

_“You can do it, Jaime, trust me.”_

_“I do. But you’re wrong.”_

_“Prove it, you stubborn jackass.”_

_“Name-calling is wrong, my lady.”_

_“That’s ‘ser’ to you—ah!”_

_“You let me get that in.”_

_“Again.”_

_“You didn’t?”_

_“I tripped.”_

_“Brienne…you beautiful stubborn jackass of a warrior, come at me.”_

* * *

Brienne is careful with how she handles the brush. She remembers vaguely from her earliest youth, the soothing feeling of a brush moving from temple to nape, pulling ever so gently at her hair, rhythmic and comforting as the heartbeat beneath a mother’s breast. Sansa’s hair is thick and shiny and beautiful, and Brienne feels bad about touching it, like an ugly giant pawing at the princess in her tower.

“Thank you for this, Brienne,” says Sansa, her head dipped forward into shadow. She takes another swig of mead. Brienne raises an eyebrow. Her lady rarely drinks more than a mouthful in the evening.

“My pleasure, my—Sansa. Please tell me if I pull too hard.”

“You don’t. I will.” Long silence between them, only the pops of the fire and the moan of the wind and the hushing of the bristles through a waterfall of red. “Brienne?”

“Yes?”

“Can I…” Brienne has never heard her lady sound so hesitant before, not even when she had just crawled out of a dead tree trunk in rags with Ramsay Bolton’s marks still dark on her skin. “May I ask you a…a private question?”

“Private?” Brienne repeats, wary. Sansa shifts a little beneath her hands and takes another sip of mead.

“About things that are not—that a lady is not meant to speak about. At least not outside the bonds of blood or marriage.”

Brienne tries to think of what Sansa wants to ask. Advice on handling the Dragon Queen? Gods, Brienne is so bad with people she’ll be absolutely no help there.

“Anything you wish. If I have the answers, I shall give them.”

Another silence. Brienne is working her way carefully around the crown of Sansa’s head, inch by inch, trying to catch every single strand on the bristles. Sansa feels so delicate beneath her hands, but she knows her lady is made of Valyrian steel.

“When you are with Ser Jaime…in—in bed…you enjoy it?”

Brienne pauses. Blinks. Blinks again.

Sansa’s shoulders tighten at the hesitation, and Brienne shakes herself out of it. Her lady is proper and never vulgar, but she knows the world, Brienne reminds herself, she knows the worst of things and she knows what she’s asking about.

_(And she has no mother to ask now, no older sisters, no septas who have known her since she was little, who else could she ask that wouldn’t revel or scheme when they learn of the vulnerabilities hidden inside the Lady of Winterfell)_

_(But why me, I don’t know how to do this, I’ll do it wrong, damn it, I can’t fail her, not in this, not ever)_

_(Jaime this is your fault somehow)_

* * *

_“I’m not used to this.”_

_“To what?”_

_“This.”_

_“You have a breathtaking way with words, Jaime.”_

_“I’m not used to lying in bed beside someone and not counting the seconds until I have to get up and run through passages or stairways to get back before anyone catches us. I’m not used to staying still so long. I’m not used to wondering what’s going on in the head on the pillow beside mine, even if I know at least a little bit of it is finding me annoying.”_

_“Most of it is finding you annoying. But I want you here. Everyone can know. Everyone does. You're mine.”_

_“And you're mine. But I just keep wondering when it ends.”_

_“Why does it have to end?”_

_“Because everything ends. Kings fall. Mothers die. Hands disappear. Nothing has ever lasted, and the longer I lie here with you the more I imagine what will end us.”_

_“I’m not used to this either.”_

_“I know—”_

_“No, you don’t, because before you weren’t alone. She may have been your sister but she was yours. And I was always alone, and I didn’t mind, because I always would be and there was no point in minding always. But now—now I have you, and you have me, and always is over, and even if I’m alone again it won’t have been the only thing I ever knew, so why are you—why—”_

_“Gods, don’t cry, I’m sorry.”_

_“I’m not crying.”_

_“Of course you’re not. My eyes water in this bloody Northern cold too.”_

_“I mean it, Jaime. Everything ends but not everything starts, and this has started, so please, just stay here with me in it, even if it’s frightening. I’m frightened but I’m here.”_

_“I’m here. I—I don’t know what I’m doing, I’ve only ever loved wrong and bad and rotten but Gods I love you and I want it to be good.”_

_“It is good. Try and get used to it.”_

* * *

“Yes,” Brienne says carefully, moving the brush over the crown of Sansa’s head. “I do enjoy it.”

“How?” Sansa’s voice is small, so young, so wondering.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…do you enjoy it because it feels—feels good? Or is it because you love Ser Jaime, and if he is happy, you are happy, even if it hurts?”

Brienne frowns, rubbing a small strand of red hair between her fingers. She thinks of Joffrey, Ramsay, Tyrion, all the men who Sansa has had to experience. She knows that none of them would have made Sansa happy with their happiness.

“Both. But it—the act of, uh—the _thing,_ feels good,” Brienne mumbles, failing at words even more than usual. “That is…well, both.”

Gods, she’s so bad at this. She’s _so bad at this._ Jaime would be better, _Podrick_ would be better, this is why the Gods made her ugly and tall and menacing, because it keeps people away from her and then they don't find out she’s so very very bad at this.

Sansa drains her cup and refills it from the jug. Brienne has never seen her drunk, and doesn’t think she is now, but the looseness in Sansa’s back and neck are visible, at odds with her usual icicle-straight posture. Brienne doesn’t blame her. Sansa has clearly wanted to ask these questions before just tonight, and even the noblest people need a little liquid courage at times.

“Can you…well…would you mind, terribly…telling me about it?” Sansa says slowly, bowing her head a bit. The brush whispers through her hair, and there haven’t been knots for a while, never really were, but Brienne will brush until the end of time if that’s how long it takes for her lady to get to what she needs. “I know it’s not polite or decent, to speak of such things.”

“I don’t find it indecent,” Brienne tells her, unsure if she believes her own words but wanting them to be true, for Sansa’s sake, for her own. “It’s everywhere, isn’t it, and men talk about it all the time. Women are expected to know nothing and everything about doing…”

“The thing?” Sansa pipes up, and Brienne laughs before she can stop herself.

“Yes, the thing. Even a beast of a woman like me is supposed to know about the thing, and what men like.”

“You’re not a beast of a woman.” Sansa’s voice is suddenly firmer. “You’re a warrior and a hero, and you keep me safer than any man ever has.” Brienne swallows and doesn’t reply, brushing only the tips of Sansa’s hair now. The wind batters at the windowpanes like the heavy arms of dead men.

“And you have a man who loves you beyond reason,” Sansa says suddenly, almost in a whisper. “A man who has hurt everyone but would never hurt you. Because he doesn’t want anything from you that hurts.”

* * *

_“But when winter is over, she’ll still be there.”_

_“Of course she will, but so will we, and we’ll have dragons.”_

_“Unless they freeze to death. Tyrion, I know her better than you, she’s not wasting this time, she—”_

_“Of course she’s not, you arse, but what can we do about it except grow stronger in our own time? Only a fool tries to outdo their enemy at being enemies. Ser Brienne, tell your man here to stop picking at me and enjoy the thimbleful of Dornish red we’ve been graciously gifted by Lady Sansa.”_

_“I won’t help you get your brother drunk.”_

_“There’s barely enough here to get_ me _drunk, and you could fit two of me in my gangly brother here. Come on, Jaime, I’m only here until the morn, can’t you—”_

_“I can feel her, Tyrion.”_

_“…feel her?”_

_“I can feel her coming up from the South. The hate and the rage and the hunger. It’s worse than it’s ever been, the way I can feel her flexing her claws.”_

_“Brother, are you sure—we can speak alone—”_

_“Brienne knows, Brienne has woken me up from nightmares, if anyone needs to know it’s Brienne because she’ll be close enough to destroy me.”_

_“I told you, Jaime—”_

_“Breaking a mirror doesn’t kill the reflection! The things I’ve done for her, the places she’s gone inside of me, if I’m not strong enough and I never am, I never—”_

_“You’re not the reflection, brother, she is! Let her break, let her die, she can’t—”_

_“When winter ends she will do everything in her power to burn us all to ashes—”_

_“She’s not a sorcerer, she’s not in your head, why are you—”_

_“I’ve never loved someone more than her before, and now she’ll_ use _it!”_

_Silence. The glug of wine from a jug._

_“You loved me. She hated me, but you never let her kill me because you loved me.”_

_“I never left her because of_ you _. I never went to another bed because of_ you _. I never—I never believed_ you _when you told me I wasn’t hers. Now I am Brienne’s and she is mine and Cersei will know and she will find a way to hurt Brienne until I’ll do anything she asks, the way she used to hurt herself until I would do anything.”_

_“…and Ser Brienne? What do you think of all this?”_

_“I think some people are better at hurting than at being people. But that cannot stop the rest of us from being people.”_

* * *

Brienne closes her eyes briefly, a handful of hair soft in her fingers. “My lady, I know you have many causes to hold against Ser Jaime, and rightly so—”

“Ser Jaime sees you for what you are, and for that I will try to see Ser Jaime,” Sansa says firmly. Brienne can see her fingers curl and uncurl in her lap, anxious. “I owe you that, Brienne. And remember, ‘Sansa.’ Please.”

“Of course. Sansa.” Brienne starts back at the beginning, running the brush from Sansa’s left temple all the way down to the small of her back. “And I am grateful that you would—that you trust me. For him. With him.”

Another silence, this one longer than the first. The candles have burned very low, and soon the only light will be from the hearth, a dim bronze glow that Brienne finds herself half-blind in. Jaime mocks her for it, “her poor old eyes,” he calls them, and she reminds him that he is eight years older than she is and if his own eyes are failing then he shouldn’t take it out on her, and then Pod smirks like the youthful do, and then Jaime does something irritatingly charming like describing the blue of her poor old eyes or doing a step or two of a regal dance to prove he’s still nimble, and then she hates how much he can make her feel by being so carelessly _him._

“Ramsay Bolton is the only man who has ever touched me.” Sansa’s voice is flatter than it has been yet tonight. Brienne grits her teeth and focuses on brushing and listening. “He didn’t trust. He didn’t love. He didn’t do anything that wasn’t mother of brother to pain. He liked to rip and—”

Sansa catches her breath. Brienne keeps her hands back, close enough that Sansa can feel them there, ready to catch her if she leans back into them, but not on skin, not where memories might be crawling over her lady like maggots on carrion.

“Did they ever do that to you?” Sansa doesn’t have to explain who “they” is.

“They…tried. Many of them tried. I was luckier than most women. I had a sword and I had strength to throw them off and the law ignored me rather than compelling me to—to—”

“I used to dream I had a sword. I used to dream of stabbing him with it. Until I stopped dreaming because it always ended with him waking me up anyway.”

Brienne wants to fold herself around Sansa, wants to protect this girl from her own past, even though she knows Sansa’s strength is legendary and that her lady is so much more than the pain and viciousness of memory. She wants to shout to the world how much there is inside Sansa, the woman’s courage and the warrior’s courage and the sovereign’s courage and the icy courage of the North. She wants Lady Catelyn to know her daughter is more than anyone ever told her she’d be, and that Ramsay Bolton and Joffrey Baratheon did not make her strong, they only proved the fact of her power as they failed time and again to be the whole point of her being.

Sansa is alive and herself and Brienne wants her desperately to know that, to know that she can make love and rule lands and live fiercely simply because she _can_ and why shouldn’t she, two feet on the ground and a heartbeat like the drumming of wolf paws across ice and snow?

Sansa swallows. “I know that there is more to—to the thing.” The barest hint of a loosening in her voice. “There has to be, if people like you and Arya and—my mother, if you all choose it. If you do it without a knife at your throats or to feed yourselves. I know it’s not all like—like Ramsay. Or Joffrey.”

“It’s not,” Brienne says very quietly.

“And I want—that is—I should, if I am to continue the Stark line,” and oh, Brienne will not speak but she rages inside at the idea of lines, of service to an idea that creates murder and greed in birth and love, and she can see in her mind Jaime’s face as he watches his children march past him without stopping to look. “But also if…if there should be a man…ever…whom I…who I can feel for…I can’t bear the thought, right now, of letting someone…but if I _tried…_ ”

Sansa takes another drink of mead and stares out into the snow, which is so thick by now it looks like a wall of stone built directly outside the Keep’s windows. Brienne understands, better than Sansa may think. After a lifetime of being called names and insulted and yet still having to sleep in her armor to keep them from trying to get inside her, Brienne had still harbored a quiet inside fantasy of someone who would ask before touching, who would admire how she swung a sword, who inexplicably wanted something of _her_ , only of her. And in the fantasy, she’d still be nervous and jumpy and terrified of her own ignorance, and ashamed of all the hands that had already touched her.

Lady Sansa had never had armor to sleep in.

* * *

_“Have you thought about it?”_

_“Of course I have, I…I couldn’t not.”_

_“I don’t mean to push you.”_

_“No, you should. Especially after…”_

_“Just now?”_

_“Well, every time, really.”_

_“Not_ every _time.”_

_“If sucking cock could make a child then yes, every time.”_

_“Fuck, I love it when you say words like "cock." Do it again.”_

_“Jaime, just—what have_ you _thought about? When you think of it?”_

_“I think…that having you is more of a second chance than I ever deserved.”_

_“But?”_

_“But if—a child did—if you did become—damn it, Brienne, don’t you know how I’d feel?”_

_“No, because you haven’t told me.”_

_“I’d leap over the moon. I’d do backflips through the frozen fucking yards of Winterfell. I’d worship you every day for nine months and start trying again in the tenth, that’s how I’d feel, to make a family with you. I had three children and every single one of them lived and died at arm’s length from me, even when they died in my very arms. To raise a child with you, to…to have that chance…”_

_“Jaime.”_

_“I’m sorry. If you don’t—if you would rather—”_

_“Ask me what I think.”_

_“What do you think, Brienne?”_

_“I think I wouldn’t know a thing about being a mother. I think I’d hate all the changes to my body and I would curse you every day for bringing it down on me. I think any respect the men have for me, after all this time, the second they saw my belly swell it would all disappear and I would be the beastly lady knight once again.”_

_“Oh Brienne…”_

_“But I also think…that it might be nice.”_

_“Nice?”_

_“I don’t know. A—a family…somewhere calm…no more fighting…”_

_“Are you tired of fighting, my lady?”_

_“I never thought I would be. But after all these years, I could—I might want it. Want them. With you. I think.”_

_“We don’t have to decide on anything right now. You’re drinking the moon tea—”_

_“Sometimes.”_

_“And we’re not even married yet. What? You didn’t imagine we’d live in sin forever, did you?”_

_“Well—no—but you—I’m not—”_

_“Fuck, Brienne of Tarth, I love you so fucking much. Come here. Hold me down. Take me. Wed me. Empty me. Do nothing but receive from me, for the rest of our lives, and let the world be brighter with you strong in it.”_

* * *

“If a person loves you, they will meet you where you start,” Brienne tells her, trying to recall the feeling of Jaime’s hand at the back of her head, his patience and his own hesitance that she found so lovable. “And you should not have to _try_ , like a green squire forced into his first battle, but rather…find your way. Together.”

Sansa’s hair is brushed and gleaming and it’s past time for Brienne to be gone, but the Dothraki hordes couldn’t drag her from the room right now. She can feel Sansa turning things over in her head. She wonders if there is a specific man Sansa wants, wants _now._ Jaime would know in an instant because he knows how people work.

“Does he have to be on top?”

The question is the boldest one yet, but Brienne is ready by now, and doesn’t startle. She keeps brushing, keeps breathing, keeps praying she won’t screw this up for the woman she serves and loves.

“No. There are many ways to—sometimes he is on top but other times the lady can be. On top. Or on your side. Or standing. Or on your other side. Or—”

“Another ‘or?’” Sansa echoes with a ring of disbelief, and Brienne knows she’s blushing all the way from her forehead to the nape of her neck. “How many ways exactly are there!”

“A—a few.”

“And you’ve done all of them?”

“Not _all_ , I don’t…I mean, I don’t think there’s a way of knowing if that’s _all_ of them.”

* * *

_“_ _Ah!”_

_“Oh…”_

_“Oh Gods, that—ow!”_

_“Brienne!”_

_“I’m fine, I’m fine, sorry.”_

_“What happened?”_

_“Nothing, Jaime, don’t stop, please—”_

_“You said ‘ow,’ what is it?”_

_“Just—you kneed me in the head.”_

_“In the head?”_

_“Just a little, it’s fine now.”_

_“I’m so sorry, I can’t—from this angle I don’t even_ have _knees, I don’t have anything except your incredible cunt in my face and your mouth on my cock and the rest of the world is mist.”_

_“Hells, Jaime, this isn’t a bloody ballad.”_

_“It should be. ‘The Mouths of Two Knights and the Battles They Fought.’ I would sing it all day, into your ear, into your cunt…”_

_“I would kick you halfway across the room.”_

_“Or just knee me in the head. Are you really all right?”_

_“Yes, Jaime, stop fussing and come back to—oooooooooh…”_

_Muffled._

_“What?”_

_“I said Podrick should sing it, he’s got quite a voice and a magic cock to boot. He could write the words.”_

_“P-podrick, a magic co—ahhhhh…what are you…oh…”_

_Muffled._

_“This time I said—”_

_“I don’t care what you said, just get over here and come in my mouth.”_

_“That would be the first line of the song.”_

* * *

Gods,” Sansa breathes, and drinks more mead. “I don’t think—I wouldn’t like it with him on top, it would feel too much like…”

“I understand.”

“And it’s…not supposed to hurt, is it? When you do it right.”

“No. I mean, the first time--but not after you get used to it together, no.”

“But I mean, not just that—that part of you. The rest of you, he’s not supposed to touch you, is he?”

Brienne frowns. Sansa’s shoulders rise, like she thinks she’s made some kind of mistake or insult.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“No no, he—he is supposed to touch you, all over. But it shouldn’t hurt. It should never hurt.”

“What does it feel like?”

Brienne summons her courage, tries to push her embarrassment and self-consciousness down into her belly where she can digest them later. “It feels…very nice. And soft. And warm, and exciting, and…weak, sometimes. It makes you feel weak in a good way.” Sansa exhales slowly, and Brienne digs the bristles of the brush in a little deeper. “Sometimes it’s, uh, rougher, a little…but never unless you want it. Never unless you ask.”

* * *

_Grunts._

_Cries of happy pain._

_The rhythmic clanging of the back of Brienne’s breastplate against the wall._

_Clothes rustling and shushing everywhere, fabric and leather and metal, except one place, where breeches have been yanked and unlaced and shoved down literally the highest they can stay while still allowing access._

_The chiming of the bells announcing the hour, when he has to go meet with Ser Davos and she has to find her lady._

_More grunting._

_High-pitched whines._

_The sound of bruises, if they make sounds._

_One cry, deep, rough, rougher than the raw patches on her buttocks from the harsh stone of the wall. “Yes—Brienne—_ yes.”

 _Panting, a_ thunk _as he drops to his knees._

_Obscene slick sounds, squelching and sucking, the murmur of fingernails being scraped down thighs, leaving marks, almost drawing blood._

_Whimpers and groans and finally a sob, two, three._

_“Jaime.” Hoarse. Ragged._

_Laughter, weak, two voices weary and shaking. The mumble of voices in the corridor outside. No time but some can be made, it can always be made._

* * *

“I don’t think I would like rough,” Sansa says quietly. Brienne shakes her head, not that Sansa can see.

“Then it won’t be rough. And if it is, I’ll cut his head off before he gets any further.” Sansa laughs before she can stop herself, and Brienne lets a tiny giggle slip through. After a moment, Sansa picks up her cup of mead and reaches back, offering it to Brienne. Brienne hesitates but takes it, sipping delicately and then taking a longer swallow when the mead burns sweet and spicy through her. It’s really not bad. Jaime is stupid.

“Do you know how to braid?” Sansa asks. Brienne blushes.

“Not…well. I’m sorry, it’s been a long time since—”

“It’s fine. If you don’t mind just brushing…it’s very nice.”

“I don’t mind at all.”

The wind is slowing now, moaning rather than howling. Brienne takes another swallow of mead and hands the cup back to Sansa. She starts to brush Sansa’s hair from the middle down, spreading the thickest locks over her fingers and admiring the beautiful deep red.

“Are you allowed to speak, with him?” Brienne frowns and looks up.

“Allowed?”

“Ramsay never let me speak,” Sansa tells her matter-of-factly. “He would pull clumps of hair out if I said anything, but if I didn’t make any noise at all he would beat me, sometimes with a boot or a stick but usually just with his hands.”

Brienne can feel bile in the back of her throat. She swallows it.

“If he weren’t dead already—”

“But he is,” Sansa interrupts with the same straightforward tone. “I’m just explaining why I don’t know. Do you talk, ever? Do men like that?”

“I…Ser Jaime does. Talk. And likes it.” Her cheeks are so warm they could melt the snow off the sill outside.

“Does he say romantic things?”

“…yes.”

“Or vulgar things?”

_(Oh Gods, this felt like it was getting easier and now it’s really not)_

“Yes.”

“Both? At the same time?”

“Some—sometimes.”

“And do you?”

“Do I like it when he talks?”

“Do you like to talk?”

Brienne considers. She’s not exactly silent in bed, far from it, but—well, she doesn’t bother with _words_ very much. Sometimes when they’re playing around, jesting with each other, finding games in sex, she’ll talk, ask for things, banter and call out “more” and “Jaime” in the same breath.

But things aren’t always playful. And when they’re not, Jaime is the only one who speaks. He says very, very specific things.

“Not as much as I like to listen.”

* * *

_“Do you even know how much I want you, Brienne? How bloody unbearable it is to sit in the hall or in the yard and have to watch you move and not go over and push you down and fuck you on the floor, on the ground, in front of everyone, I would do that, I would take you in front of Podrick and Davos and Lady Sansa and that giant fucking Wildling, I would have them see how good I can make you feel, the only one, me, how it’s only me who gets to.”_

_A high-pitched whimper._

_Linens rustling as she rolls her hips and his fingers curl so hard inside her it feels like being turned inside-out._

_“Your legs, Gods, your legs are forty miles long, I love how you wrap them around me when you want me to fuck you faster, like you can’t get enough, like you’re trying to pull me in even further, and you can, you are, you’re so fucking strong, your stomach, here, I can feel the muscles moving, I have no hand but I can feel the power inside every inch of you.”_

_“Oh!”_

_The bedframe creaking as she thrashes._

_Panting, loud, tinged with groans like after a hard fight._

_Slick sounds as he slides upwards, mouthing at her breasts, rutting against her thigh._

_“I want to come on your tits, Brienne, I want to come on your stomach and your throat and your face and your arse and your hand, I want to come in you, I want you to feel how hard you make me spend myself, it feels like being beaten down with a war hammer, I lose my mind, can’t live without it, so good, so good, I don’t have the words for it, I want to mark you with myself and no matter how hard you scrub it will never really come off, not really, Gods, Brienne, please—”_

_“Aaaah…ah!”_

_The frame smashing against the wall, harder and harder,_ thunk thunk thunk.

 _Their skin meeting,_ slap slap slap.

_His breath harsh, eyes hazy, a bit of a whine in his voice as he changes veins—_

_“I love you, I love you, oh, Brienne, please, you are, oh, you’re everything, don’t leave, I love you, what have you, AH, what do you do to me, why are you, oh, oh, why are you_ like _this, ah, how can it, ah, fuck, I love you, so beautiful, so good, you are good, you are the best thing in, oh, oh Gods, I want to make you happy, I love you, I want—this is—oh—Brienne, my Bri—eh—it—OH!”_

_Panting so hard it feels like the bed is still shaking._

_A squishy wet sound as she runs her hands up his back, dripping in sweat, kneads his shoulders, lowers an equally sweaty leg and rubs his calf with her foot._

_“I love you, Jaime. So much.”_

_A short laugh, eaten up in the middle of another labored breath. A sigh as he buries his head in her neck and they both hold on tight._

* * *

“You can stop brushing if you want.”

“Only if _you_ want.”

“Would do—do you think you can tie it back, with the same one from my braid? Just like this, a horse’s tail.”

“Of course. That is, let me try.”

Brienne stands up to get a better angle, frowning in concentration as she winds the scrap of linen around her lady’s hair. Only when she succeeds in getting it all _(mostly)_ tied back and secure does she look up and catch a glimpse of herself and Sansa reflected in the dull grey windows, backlit by the fire. She sees her own face only in shadow, Sansa’s beautiful pale features more defined, but the two of them closer together, intimate, hands in hair, like—like sisters. Or a mother and her daughter. Like some kind of family.

“Thank you, Brienne,” Sansa says with a smile. She reaches up and finds one of Brienne’s hands in her own cool fingers, squeezing it gently. “Come around, sit—sit beside me.”

Brienne obediently drags her chair forward so that she sits beside Sansa rather than behind her. The last candles sputter out, and the chamber is full of shadows edged in gold. Sansa is still holding her hand and smiling at her with eyes that are only a little bit sad.

Brienne thinks briefly she should ask if Sansa has the questions because of a particular man, a particular person--but if she does, and she wants Brienne to know, she will tell her. Certainly after tonight they'll never have secrets.

“I remember when you came for me…riding out of the woods like a vision of the Warrior. I remember how you cut the Bolton men down and how you lay your sword before me and I just…” Sansa takes a breath, suddenly squeezing tighter. “I don’t know what’s next, Brienne, after this winter, with Cersei, with any of it, but I want you to know that you are—that—”

Brienne wants to look away from the tears in Sansa’s eyes, wants to respect the icy lady she usually serves by refusing to witness her moments of softness. But after this quiet night together, nestled in the midst of war and work and the struggle of not starving, she couldn’t do that to her lady. To Sansa.

“I don’t have my mother anymore, or my father,” Sansa whispers finally. “My sister and brothers belong to so many other people now, and I know that you don’t belong only to me either, but I still think of you as—as family. In all but blood, in the eyes of the old gods and the new. And if you ever doubt what you might mean to me—”

Brienne wraps her arms around Sansa and pulls her close, shifting forward in her seat so that she can gather her lady nearly into her lap and cup her head close with one large hand. Sansa melts into her, laying her brow on Brienne’s shoulder, and Brienne remembers this kind of embrace, the one she could only have with her father because he was half a foot taller than her and miles taller than the nasty little shits who still managed to look down on her, and in his arms she could be small and warm and safe.

“I have you, Sansa,” she whispers, and strokes the well-brushed hair. “My lady, I’m here, I have you.”

Thin arms tighten around her. “I’m trying to feel safe away from you. I don’t—I can’t chain you to my side, I know that.”

“You could. It would not bring me dishonor.”

“No, but it would bring Ser Jaime a lot of frustration.” Brienne laughs before she can stop herself, and Sansa pulls back she can see her lady is giggling too. This is how girls laugh together, not a lady and a soldier stuck between endless wars. This is a little piece of living.

“Sansa, if you ever—if you want to talk more about this—”

“I know. But before I can think of feeling safe with a man, I have to feel safe on my own, without my sworn shield or my little sister and her knives.”

“You don’t _have_ to. Not when the people who love you want to help.”

Sansa smiles again. “I want to, then. And the people I love make it easier.” The smile fades as she looks over at the dying fire. She stands and strides to the hearth, bending down to throw one log and then another onto the ashes. She nudges at them with a poker, waits patiently until the dry wood catches, and when she turns back to Brienne the new wash of light reveals that something open has closed back up, and the Lady of Winterfell stands tall and straight.

“It’s far past time for me to release you,” she says in her calm, slow voice. “Please send my lady’s maids to my chambers and then take your own rest.”

“Yes my lady,” Brienne says, nodding as she stands.

“I shall see you after breakfast, to discuss training initiatives.”

“Yes my lady.”

“That will be all, Brienne. Good night.”

Brienne nods again and, suddenly remembering, carefully moves the silver hairbrush back to its spot on the windowseat. “Good night, my lady.”

* * *

The castle is still half-awake when Brienne finally makes it back to her chamber door. Even in the dead of night people are awake, stuffed in next to each other and humming with pent-up energy, drinking and sparring and fighting at all hours. She found it exhausting at first, but has come to get some comfort from it, in its constant reassurance of life and passing time.

When she opens the door, she’s met with more warm darkness. The fire is still burning, because even though Jaime bitches and whines he knows how much she likes to be on top of things like that. His boots are piled by the foot of the bed and his clothes are draped messily over a nearby chair, which he claims he’s allowed to do because it’s hard to fold things with one hand, even though she showed him how and he just scoffed. And there he is himself, a long lump under the furs and sheets, still and sprawling.

She undresses as quietly as possible, unbuckling her swordbelt and hanging it beside his on the wall. She considers leaving her shift on, but it’s so warm in here and Jaime runs hot and after tonight she wants to feel him skin on skin, close and alive and real. She slides into bed with careful movements, trying not to wake him.

But of course he’s already up, and pounces on her just as she’s settling back onto the pillows.

“Damn it, Jaime!”

He chuckles, his legs on either side of her, his left hand pinning her wrist above her head and his right arm worming under her neck to tilt her head back and expose her neck. “Your field reflexes are slowing.”

“This isn’t the field, it’s my bedroom!”

“And yet it sees considerable action,” he murmurs into her throat. Brienne hums with irritation and runs her hands through his hair, cut shorter now, more like it used to be during those few weeks in King’s Landing so long ago. “What kept my lady so late?”

“Your lady has many obligations besides you.”

“I wouldn’t love her if she didn’t. But they don’t usually keep her out of my bed for so long.” He pulls back and looks down at her, smile fading a bit. In the firelight the lines of his jaw and nose and brow are so clean and cut, razor-sharp, a face meant to be known and looked at.

She loathed him once, fought him, pushed him off his feet. Now safety lives in his skin and in his words and in his breath.

“Is something wrong? Trouble?”

“No trouble,” she says, stroking his brow where grey edges the gold. “Lady Sansa wanted to talk.”

“About what?”

“If she wanted you to know, she would have asked you to join us.”

“Fair enough,” he shrugs, rolling to the side and gazing at her from the pillow. “You just look…”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Thoughtful.”

“Those of us with thoughts often look that way. I see why you might not be familiar.”

He laughs, and her heart glows, because she learned to be this kind of swift and cutting from him and now when they do it together it’s like holding hands or making love, something intimate, well-shaped.

Brienne feels a swoop of something in her stomach as she looks at Jaime, his eyes lined at the edges, his shoulders still defined, his story complicated but his desire to change it simple as wind and water. She levers herself up on her elbows and straddles him, appreciating that he’s naked too _(though he usually is, at least in this room)._ He blinks up at her and runs his hand up her thigh.

“Are these where your thoughts lead you, Ser Brienne?”

“Perhaps,” she breathes, as his fingers slide up and over her lower belly, dipping into her navel, skimming the hair below. She settles down even more, her legs moving apart, and Jaime’s hand accepts the terms and slides down. Her eyes are locked on his as she feels him try out different patterns, different rhythms, reading the language of her body like any good sparring partner, and when something makes her catch her breath he does it again, and again, and again, keeps doing it even when she slumps forward, shuddering, catching herself with hands flat on his chest.

It’s building from the bottom up, that unbearable flood of warmth and tingling and _want want want_ , and she rocks against his hand, panting, feeling vulnerable even though she’s towering over him, whining when he slows on purpose and groaning when he speeds back up.

“You look like a story when you’re like this,” he murmurs, those words starting to come out. “A story about a knight who rides for glory and honor, who shines in the sun and glows at night, who makes love to men until they’re driven from their wits, Brienne, look at me, let me see the hero of the songs I love…”

Something snaps and she ruthlessly shoves herself upwards, clumsily digging her toes into his side as she scrambles to get in position over his face, and he doesn’t miss a beat, he keeps talking into her but now she can feel every syllable in the most tender part of herself and his fingers are inside her too now, curling, pushing, again and again, and his tongues flicks endlessly and she can’t stand it and it’s _Jaime_ the golden prince of the west the prisoner the soldier the myth the real real man who loves her and wants her and oh Gods it’s not stopping it’s too much she’s going to—

Brienne tends to come out of orgasm like a swimmer breaking the surface, gasping when she realizes she’s been holding her breath and blinking hard as she looks around her and feeling comes back into her rubbery limbs. This time she only lingers for a few seconds before Jaime puts her in the hip and she shuffles backwards, realizing too late she might have been suffocating him. He’s panting, yes, but also grinning, his whole face shiny and slick, traces of her sticky on his clean-shaven jaw, and his hand gently strokes her waist.

“Don’t be so pleased with yourself,” she huffs, even as she wobbles on her knees with fading aftershocks. The grin gets wider, and she narrows her eyes, and slides down until she feels it press hard and hot against her ass and then she raises herself up and reaches down to grab hold of his cock and now he’s not smiling.

“Brienne…”

“You think you’re so good,” she says, squeezing him, coming down just enough to rub against him with all the wetness that’s his fault anyway, and he inhales sharply. “You think you are a marvel, you think the world is lucky to have you in it.”

“I—oh…” He arches up as she takes him in without warning, settling herself flush on his hips, clenching around him, watch the tendons in his neck shift as he pants.

“You think you’re so good, Jaime Lannister, but do you know the truth?”

“Wh…what…truth…” he answers, trying to keep up with the unusual level of speech she’s bringing to this, even as she rocks gently on him and his hips twitch.

“The truth is…you _are_ so good,” and she leans forward to kiss him on the lips for the first time that night, cradling his head in her hands, rolling her hips now and swallowing the moan it gets her. “You are a marvel, you shine like stars, Jaime Lannister, you are wonderful.”

“ _Brienne,_ ” he says again, more desperate this time, and she rolls her hips back and forth and back and forth, in slow circles, sitting back up so she can pin his wrists up by his head and she can watch his mouth fall open and his eyes widen and the muscles in his chest shift as he tries to buck up but she holds him down, she holds him, she has him.

“You make me feel so good, so safe, you make my body want to burst and you make my heart strong and sure and your honor calls me home to you, Jaime, I love you because you are so _good,_ ” moving faster, eyes locked on his, watching him drown in the pleasure of her words and his body, trying to stay afloat but she rides him harder, pounds him down into the mattress and she leans back down and says, “My Jaime, my good man,” and he gasps loud and harsh and goes under, writhing and moaning and then suddenly still for a split second before he jackknifes and thrusts his hips up so hard and fast she nearly tumbles off him, again, again, coming inside her and shouting with it and his eyes roll back but his fingers scrabble at hers and she squeezes back, watches him trust her to pull him back out when it’s all over.

* * *

They lie side by side on top of the furs, letting the sweat dry and the blush fade. He’s looking at her, heavy-lidded, his right arm tucked under her head and his left hand stroking her hair. It feels so nice, so soft and loving, and Brienne thinks of the silver hairbrush in Sansa’s long red hair.

“Where did that come from?” he finally says, plain and quiet. She cuddles closer and scratches gently at the hair on his chest.

“I’m not sure. Being thoughtful.”

“Gods, even I have never had thoughts quite like that.”

“Liar.”

He pulls her closer still and tucks her head under his chin. Some nights she holds him, some nights he holds her, it doesn’t matter in the end as long as they’re them.

“The snow is almost up over the front gate,” he says sleepily, already drifting off. “Perhaps we’ll be frozen in here forever.”

“There are worse things,” she says with a yawn, and wraps an arm around his chest. “Besides, Lady Sansa says it’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Fucking North,” he grumbles.

“Jaime…”

“Hmmm?” He’s almost gone, his fingers slowing at her temple.

“No matter what, I have you. All right? I have you.”

“And I you, ser,” he breathes, and a moment later his buzzing snore starts from above her.

Brienne settles against him and closes her eyes. The wind is softer here, a quiet hum beyond the walls. Danger whips through it, but safety beats beneath her cheek, and all things must end and begin in turn.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews would be very lovely. Also, they may get me to write more, if you want it. So. Y'know. Choice is yours.


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